Abstract
There is a growing interest in research that reveals the reality of organizations, networks and transference from the perspective of individual foresters. In order to compare the forestry between the Japanese empire and its colonies, this study examined the experiences of a forester named Otosaku Saito in Taiwan during the early years of Japanese occupation and in Yamanashi Prefecture after enactment of the Forest Act. In Taiwan, he was engaged in educating native inhabitants, contributed to the ascent of the East Peak of Yushan as well as to the discovery of the genus Cypress, but returned to Japan after an incident during the Alishan Forest survey. In Yamanashi, he confronted the Imperial Estates Bureau (IEB) using facts aimed to incorporate the communal land owned by the IEB into the forest reserve. His proposal concerning the use of local resources was considered reasonable. Saito was
a ‘generalist forester’ who, in addition to possessing the necessary academic knowledge for forestry, was able to respond flexibly to practical challenges in the field. In the early days of the Japanese empire, foresters were sage reformers who were able to build on the body of knowledge by providing ‘on-the-spot knowledge’ regarding practical field work.
